Collaborating to perpetuate an industry: a social responsibility

This study investigates how and why different communities affect the practices of entrepreneurs. Based on the lived experiences of 10 cultural entrepreneurs in rural communities, the findings highlight the overlapping nature of social fields. This study reveals that embeddedness in certain contexts, such as creative communities, can lead entrepreneurs to share their various resources with industry members to help one another and to advance the cultural field as a whole. Participants consider such practices a social responsibility and a task that is passed from one generation to the next. Thus, their behaviours are more altruistic and supportive towards potential competitors than might be assumed based on exiting research. It is argued that this difference is a consequence of field-specific rules and norms, which can override conventional market-driven logics.